A Multifaceted Approach to the Translation of Collocations from English to Persian

The study set out to scrutinize the translation of Verb-Noun and Adjective-Noun collocations from English into Persian from different perspectives. The causes of mistranslation of collocations, procedures employed in translating collocations and the effect of context in translating collocations constitute the main perspectives of this study. For this purpose, two translation tasks including 20 verb-noun and adjective-noun collocations each, one in context and the other out of context, were given to 20 Iranian BA English Translation students. Vinay and Darbelnet (1995) and Newmark’s (1988) translation models were adopted as the main theoretical frameworks of the study. The results showed that literal translation in task 1 (i.e. collocations in context) and restricted collocational competence in task 2 (i.e. collocations out of context) were the main causes of mistranslation of collocations. The findings also revealed that equivalence, literal translation, and transposition were the most conspicuous procedures in translating collocations in both tasks 1 and 2. The result of paired sample t-test signified the outperformance of subjects in translating collocations in context to those of out of context.